A while back we organized an inspirational day on publishing. Our Vice-Chancellor welcomed everyone and the chairs of our research boards talk about publising. Martin G Erikson talked about scientific publishing and his own reflections on the matter. He was talking about if our research is scientific and what does our mission statement “science for professions” mean in research context. Lars Hallnäs talked about the dangers of publish or perish – when researchers must produce more and more publications but do not have time to do the research and that a researcher does not have the possibility to be a little bit crazy with his/her research ideas because research financers do not want to pay for “crazy” research.
The day continued with Björn Hammarfelt and his presentation on bibliometrics. He talked about what bibliometrics is, why is it of interest for researchers and how do we work with bibliometrics. Gustaf Nelhans continued on the bibliometrics theme.He talked about bibliometrics as a tool for evaluation and citations being equated with quality. He did stress with Eugene Garfields words that “impact is not the same as importance or significance“. He talked also about resource allocation models.
Before lunch and the afternoon workshops on open access and bibliometrics Helena Francke and Pieta Eklund presented the open access publishing situation. The different ways to open access, research funders’ mandates on open access (especially Horizon 2020) and what kind for research service the library could offer.
The participants were content with they day and thought that the practical elements of the workshops added value to the day. The day clarified some aspects on publishing and bibliometrics. There was interest for similar theme days among the participants and as it happens a day is planned, 14th of May, around research funding and review of reseach applications. Book the day in you calendar!
Pieta Eklund